Please Welcome Worm!

Well...Worm's not home yet, she can't be shipped until the weather is a little cooler on both ends. BUT I didn't want to wait a few more weeks to show her off. She's so pretty!

My good friend Bob from Mountain Folk Serpents http://mtnfolkserpents.zxq.net/ mentioned that a teeny runty snake had hatched from a cluch he had. He posted a picture of the teeny little snake, and I was smitten. I asked if she was spoken for, and he said no, as long as she eats I could claim her. Some baby snakes take a long time to start eating, but Worm has not had that problem! Despite being unusually small, she has no trouble with her meals! Now to wait for a cool spell that happens both here and in KY so she can come home safely. Bob has been generously taking pictures for me so I don't go crazy waiting, LoL!

Here's miss Worm still glistening, fresh from her egg!

Here is the image I fell in love with originally. I love that her pattern is so regular and evenly spaced, and her colors are so rich even before she's had her first shed.

After her first shed. See how much brighter she is? She should just get brighter and brighter every shed for a year or more!

I love this picture. Her daddy is a "redcoat" corn snake, which is a gene that's not fully understood, but it should mean that her background color will have a bright pink/red wash to it, and you can see the pink coming in here.

To see Worm's dad, click Bob's site, go to the males, and scroll to the second-to-last photo, Ochre. He's so bright! Mom is Gracie, 4th snake down on the females page.

Here is a picture of Worm's parents together.

Here's one last picture, of Gracie laying her eggs, February 26. One of those eggs has my Worm in it! (obviously, all of the pics in this thread belong to Bob, not me!)

Anyways, thanks for listening to me ramble. I've got Worm's home all set up and waiting, but alas, my weather-controlling abilities are failing me.

"That's the power of kittens (and puppies too, of course): They can reduce us to quivering masses of Jell-O in about two seconds flat and make us like it. Good thing they don't have opposable thumbs or they'd surely have taken over the world by now." -- Paul Lukas

Worm sure is tiny. She really does have bright coloring after her shed. What species are her parents?

Both of her parents are corn snakes, with different genes to make them different "morphs". Ochre is a Redcoat Ultramel...the redcoat means that he's very bright and saturated with color, the ultramel gene is the reason that his markings don't have a border of black around them. Gracie is an anery stripe. The anery gene removes all red pigment, so that's why she is grey. Worm will carry redcoat, ultramel, anery, and stripe to pass along to any offspring she might have in the future, and both of her parents carry other genes that she might now carry as well. She's a genetic powerhouse, LoL!

Worm is adorable! I don't know an awful lot about snakes, so thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge. I've always had an interest in mammalian genetics so it's great to learn about them in the reptile world, too!

I know you're referring to Worm as "her" - have you & the breeder done testing (?) to determine gender? Is that even possible?
How DO you determine gender?

The colors on Worm are very striking! (No pun intended! lol)

When the babies are very small, you can "pop" them by bending the tail back gently and pressing on their body right where their tail starts. If it's a boy, the "boy parts" will pop out. Bob has popped her twice, and he's going to double-check with a probe before he sends her out. You can take a small lubricated metal probe and insert it into their vent (ouch!). In a female, the probe will not got very far in (maybe 1-3 scales down), but on a male the probe will go down up to 15 scales. You can hurt a baby snake doing this, I'm way too chicken to try any probing with mine. Probing is more accurate than popping though, and once the snake is too big to pop it's the best option.

Here's a picture I found from cornutopia.com (Kathy Love's website, she's a cornsnake guru!) that illustrates probing really well!